


Achilles Healed

by Magical_Destiny



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Achilles and Patroclus - Freeform, Feels, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Hannibal Loves Will, Hannibal continues to make mythological parallels to his relationship with Will, M/M, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Will Loves Hannibal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-18 20:37:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13108092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magical_Destiny/pseuds/Magical_Destiny
Summary: In another life, Hannibal sketched Will as Patroclus and himself as Achilles. In their new life, Hannibal sketches again—and discovers that the image has shifted as profoundly under his pencil as it has in his heart.My contribution to the Radiance Anthology.





	Achilles Healed

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this at the beginning of 2017 and submitted it to the [Radiance Anthology.](https://radiance-anthology.tumblr.com) You can find it on page 350 in the book! Many thanks to [hannibalnuxvoxmica](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hannibalnuxvoxmica/pseuds/hannibalnuxvoxmica) for betaing this for me way back then. <3

I have often wondered why love is such a cold thing. Tiny, frigid fingers gripping my own; a voice, thin and breakable as ice, calling my name.

_Hannibal._

A memory, so vivid around the edges I have carefully polished and preserved. White, everywhere. The piercing gleam of snow — the pit yawning open like a wound lethally deep or a mouth ready to devour. The flash of something inside. Not snow or ice or stones: a few tiny teeth, scattered like stars. Even her blood would have turned to ice where it fell.

The cold is as endless as time.

“Hannibal.”

It’s a lengthy journey back to myself, but Will’s voice lights my way. The sound of distant waves reaches me at the same moment as the smell of salt. When I open my eyes, the sun is bright enough to sting. I’m facing our little house on the shore. Before the memories called me, I had not been watching the water.

There is silence as a shadow shifts in the rumpled bed, finally working itself upright. The wordless energy turns exasperated. He’s seen the sketch I left on the bedside table.

“You’re really stuck on the Achilles and Patroclus thing. Should I be concerned that I’m always the one dying?” A crinkle of paper as it’s grasped none too gently.

“They both died,” I reply, stepping through the open glass door. “For each other.”

A snort. “ _Because_ of each other. There’s an important distinction there.” 

“Not so important in the afterlife. All that remains is the ultimate reality of being together.”

My eyes adjust to the relative darkness of the room at last. Will’s expression is furrowed with the remnants of sleep as he studies the sweeping lines of graphite. He looks uneasy, but it isn’t the drawing that has unsettled him. His eyes are still clouded when they meet mine.

“Where were you, just now?”

I feel something not unlike the scouring of icy wind against exposed skin. Even after all this time, I am not used to being _seen._ I had not been expecting him to catch me in a memory. Had not wanted or prepared for it. A lie rises up, quick and clear as water. I pour out the truth instead.

“A memory. A very cold memory.”

Will nods, his hands slackening as he forgets the sketch. “And where are you now?” he asks.

The sun is warm against my back when I answer, “Here.”

A faint smile. He sees the truth just as surely as he sees everything else. Will loves the truth, even when it hurts him. This has not always been the case. But now he loves the truth because it makes him free.

The paper flutters from between his loose fingers, sweeping across the pale wood floor. Our fingers brush when we both lean down to retrieve it. His skin is flushed and warm from sleep. He leaves the paper to my care.

I make room for him in the doorway. He moves to stand in the sun and the briny wind.

I wonder if, perhaps, love is not such a cold, colorless thing after all. Perhaps it is pink and gold and almost hot enough to burn. Perhaps it is the exact shade of the sunlight warming Will’s skin.

***

The sketch is not right.

Patroclus’ face is smooth and peaceful in death; he is a vision of fallen glory. He has Will’s eyes, long-lashed and expressive even in death. I recognize Will’s hair, Will’s arms, even though I had not intended the resemblance to go so far. Intentions matter so little when it comes to Will. Or to Patroclus, for that matter. He intended to save the Greeks; he set Achilles’ doom into motion when he died in the undertaking.

Did Patroclus die when Hector pierced him with a spear, I wonder? Or did he truly die with Achilles?

Either way, death came for him. The pitiless silence and stillness that no man can escape. Life screamed around him in the clatter of chariots, the rush of wind, the thunder of soldiers’ heartbeats. Men strove with gods and destiny in a maelstrom of fire and blood. The myths claim the sand ran black with it before the end. But Fate could only be denied so long. Death came, welling like that endless blood to engulf Patroclus against his expectations and hopes. He ended his days like the rest of mankind: cut off too soon by a will not his own. Swallowed by silence and dust.

Silence, absence, endings. The only thing that is truly endless is the cruelty of Time.

For so long, I have only known love in death. The memory of Mischa is a strange fusion of silence and song. A portrait carved in ice, bloodless and beautiful, too far away to ever really touch. Poets have always extolled the glories of love, the warmth, the madness, the soaring freedom — but I have known love as a shadow cast by absence, the empty ache of listening through present silence for past laughter.

Loving someone alive is more difficult than I remember. Will moves and breathes of his own volition, free of the constraints of my memory or perception. He _is_ , regardless of me. I wonder if the breathless sensation I carry with me is fear. But perhaps that is simply another facet of love, one that I’d forgotten over the long years of solitude.

Being alone is easier, I think. Perhaps the same thought crossed Achilles’ mind after Patroclus died. Of course, Achilles flung himself headfirst into the arms of prophecy and doom regardless. All so he could avenge the one he loved and join him in the Underworld.

I study the likeness I’ve created on the page: Patroclus, beautiful and broken, wearing Will’s face. The sketch is not right, although I can’t define the reason. The proportions are correct, the technique admirable. Something more elusive and far more serious is wrong. The space beside Patroclus is blank, although I can picture Achilles, his face and body contracted in a paroxysm of grief. In my mind, it’s my face he wears, stained with blood and torn by mourning.

I have often imagined Achilles with golden hair and piercing eyes, though I had never fixed on a color. But in my mind, the image shifts without warning. For the first time, I wonder if Achilles' curls might have been brown rather than gold, his eyes a turbulent mix of blue and green, changeable and fathomless as the sea. 

***

“Get some rest,” Will chides me, nearly every night. He thinks I don’t sleep enough. It’s true that I sleep very little, but rest is more elusive still. Even the word itself is more easily associated with death than life.

_Rest in peace._

Such innocuous words, soft and light and comforting. They belie the rage that comes with dying. The fear. The body fights death almost as much as the soul does, heart racing, blood surging, eyes wide.

Do the dead rest? I have come to believe the living never do.

Yet Will sleeps peacefully. He is beyond my reach for hours each night, walking through dreams I can never see, although he assures me that I am frequently a part of them.

I do not often dream. Sometimes I wake with adrenaline in my blood as though I’ve been running endlessly in my sleep. _Running after me or from me?_ is Will’s question. He is much too astute.

On nights when the moon spills through the glass doors, there is enough light to sketch by. Will looks younger when he sleeps, more open and trusting. He wears expressions I would never otherwise see. I sketched _La Primavera_ , once upon a time, chasing a perfect likeness. Now I sketch Will. He sees the growing number of sketches beside the bed each morning, but refuses to comment. It makes no difference; the way he blushes is comment enough.

This time, I begin with Achilles: the indistinct beginnings of a face, a broad chest, muscled arms. A few sweeping lines fill in the figure of the Greek messenger clinging to Achilles’ mighty hands, afraid that he might seize his sword and slash his own throat in grief for the slain Patroclus. Achilles' posture shifts to wide-eyed disbelief under my pencil, lips parted for his voice to break over three syllables again and again—

It’s the very expression I saw when I woke on the sand below an eroding bluff. Will’s broken expression, my name falling from his lips along with blood and saltwater. 

It was my intention to model Patroclus on Will, but my hand rebelled. He has become Achilles instead; the likeness is visible in every line. The curve of Will’s biceps, the plane of his chest, the changeable tilt of his lips and eyebrows — I’ve traced the lines of his body so often with my fingertips that I could draw them all without reference. I look anyway, always certain that some key detail will elude me. That somehow, _Will_ might elude me.

Strange, that I sketched counter to my intentions. I wonder what Will might say to the change and leave the sketch where he’s sure to see it.

_You’re really stuck on the Achilles and Patroclus thing._

A crude analysis, but not untrue. I don’t believe in reincarnation, but I do believe in destiny, ringing like a struck gong, its ripples shimmering through endless years and bending time and reality just so. Mirror images and congruent doubles: men meeting their matches. Will always replies to this sort of talk with exasperated looks. I persist, running after the hint of a smile that twitches at the corner of his lips.

Running, endlessly. Perhaps my dreams are not so difficult to unravel after all.

Sleep pulls at me at last. Will is close and peaceful beside me. I remember Achilles’ words: _I’ll lie in peace, once I’ve gone down to death._

Will and I died together on that long ago bluff.

I rest.

***

“An upgrade,” is Will’s comment when he finally deigns to notice my latest sketch. “I get to die of an arrow to the heel instead of being bludgeoned to death by Hector.” A pause in which he makes a great show of considering. I’ll remind him of this moment the next time he accuses me of being dramatic. “ _Is_ that an upgrade?”

“A variant,” I reply. “And Patroclus was killed with a spear, if you’ll recall.”

Will shrugs eloquently, but he handles the paper with care when he lays it on the bedside table. “I’m dead either way.”

“You are a hero of classic antiquity either way.”

“The man, the myth—“

“—a legend, yes.”

“Hm,” is Will’s only verbal answer for a long moment. His face, always so expressive, is skeptical, amused, and irritated in turn. His smile doesn’t interrupt any of those sentiments when it comes. It paints a layer of something like happiness over them all. “I like it,” he says.

The warmth I feel, provoked by such a simple statement, is not entirely rational. I move to stand close beside him so we can study the sketch together.

“Do you know why Achilles succumbed to the arrow in his heel?” I ask, at length. Will shakes his head, still studying his mirror image in finely sketched lines. “When his mother, the goddess Thetis, dipped him in the River Styx to fortify him against death, she had to grip him by the heel. Death did not touch him everywhere, and so he remained vulnerable to it.”

Will hears what I’m saying, just as he always does. Just as he always will.

“You don’t think that’s a problem for me,” he says, his tone flat, but never expressionless. I hear his acceptance of himself — his acceptance of _me_. It’s remarkable that he has finally achieved both, and all at once. Although perhaps it isn’t two achievements after all. Perhaps they are, and always were, the same thing.

“No,” I answer simply, but I know Will hears me again.

 _You surpass Achilles in every way. In life, you are more vivid than he. Even in death, you’re luminous. Even in the Underworld, you live_.

***

I’ve written a letter to Jack. Will won’t be pleased.

I’ve toyed with the idea of sending it, but the possibility that it might be traced to these warm shores isn’t a pleasant one. Perhaps I’ll leave it in the house to be found once we’ve moved on. Will isn’t eager to leave either our seclusion or the sea, but we must, eventually. No secret stays buried forever, and we have become nothing but secrets.

Except to each other.

I told Will as much; he accused me of becoming more maudlin than ever. I suspect he may be right. Even the letter condemns me.

_Dear Jack,_

_I am content, as peaceful as the Elysian Fields. I imagine Patroclus must have felt this way when at last the soul of Achilles drifted into the Underworld to join him. Two souls, eternally bound, and past the reach of all mortals._

_Do not disturb our rest. Remember that Achilles carved a path of blood all the way to the very doors of death when the one he loved was taken from him._

_Goodbye, Jack. I wish you well in your life among the living, drifting alone on the other side of the final veil. Remember well what separates you from Will and I._

_Mortality._

_Yours Very Sincerely,_

_Hannibal Lecter_

***

Living by the shore agrees with Will. His skin has browned and his eyes have relaxed. His lips taste of salt more often than not. 

My pencil hangs idly from my fingers. I am waiting, as all artists before me, for the whisper of a Muse.

Will is standing by the water, head tilted as though he’s listening. Perhaps the sea calls to him and no one else can hear. I’m jealous of their secret conversations.

Achilles’ mother was a goddess of the sea, I recall. I wonder if Achilles heard its voice. Perhaps the call of the sea tugged at him like fishhooks, singing in the blood he’d inherited from a divine mother.

My fingers tighten on the pencil. Almost without thought, I sketch Will standing on another shore, beautiful and proud. A robe hanging from his scarred shoulders, armor discarded at his feet. He is listening in the image I’ve sketched, face tilted to the sun. When I make room for myself on that shore, I am more distant and less distinct. I find that I am kneeling in the dust, fingers stretched out to the vision of divinity before me. I am Patroclus, a mere man, destined to die for his lover and his god. 

Unsettling, to see oneself in such a way. But have I not always been captivated by what is beautiful? I look at the sketch and decide: it’s perfect, at last.

Something in my chest goes as silent and smooth as still waters. On that unbroken surface, I see no reflection of myself: only Will, always Will, his smile shining like sunlight on the water. I find myself confronted with a similar image when I open my eyes.

Will and the sun. How strange to be surrounded by light within and without.

Will is waving me over to look at something across the waves. Or perhaps, impossibly, he only wants me to be closer.

Standing beside Will, I imagine another sea and another shore. Green waves bearing hundreds of bobbing wooden ships, their masts reaching toward the sky like a barren winter forest. Fires dotting the sand, sending up sparks to mingle with the stars. Achilles and Patroclus spent many years walking the shores before the gates of Troy. Between the bouts of blistering sun and barbarous violence, there were quiet moments when the blood was washed away and the screams of war gave way to the peaceful sounds of the night. Such was the flow of their lives for many years. Until, of course, they were both dead and there was no more war at all.

I have always wondered whether being reunited in the Underworld could have wiped out so many years of war and pain. How could it possibly have been enough?

And yet it is more than enough. To be together is the sum of everything.

When Will smiles, I witness a miracle. Having passed through the shades of death, Achilles is healed.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic may represent the height of my fandom insanity, because not only did I write a first person Hannibal Lecter fic, I also read the entire Iliad as research. I've heard people say that fandom and fanfic are lesser forms of artistic expression, but if a monolith of literature can be combined with a sappy Hannibal-is-so-in-love fic, then maybe we can safely disagree with that idea.
> 
> Or maybe not. I'll let you decide lol. 
> 
> My apologies if the first person POV was weird. It felt right for this oneshot since I needed to get as close to Hannibal's heart and mind as possible. I hope it worked for you. As for me, I'll probably never write in first person again. XD 
> 
> Let me know if you enjoyed?


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